Mary Wollstonecraft | Page 5

dreary waste, fenced about with broken gravestones, the one fresh
green spot is the corner occupied by the monument{1} erected to the
memory of Mary Wollstonecraft, and separated from the open space by
an iron railing. There is no sign of withering willows in this enclosure.
Its trees are of goodly growth and fair promise. And, like them, her
character now flourishes, for justice is at last being done to her.
{1} Her body has been removed to Bournemouth.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH.
1759-1778.
Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April, 1759, but whether
in London or in Epping Forest, where she spent the first five years of
her life, is not quite certain. There is no history of her ancestors to show
from whom she inherited the intellectual greatness which distinguished
her, but which characterized neither of her parents. Her paternal
grandfather was a manufacturer in Spitalfields, of whom little is known,
except that he was of Irish extraction and that he himself was
respectable and prosperous. To his son, Edward John, Mary's father, he
left a fortune of ten thousand pounds, no inconsiderable sum in those
days for a man of his social position. Her mother was Elizabeth,
daughter of Mr. Dixon, of Ballyshannon, Ireland, who belonged to an
eminently good family. Mary was the second of six children. The eldest,
Edward, who was more successful in his worldly affairs than the others,

and James, who went to sea to seek his fortunes, both passed to a great
extent out of her life. But her two sisters, Eliza and Everina, and her
youngest brother, Charles, were so dependent upon her for assistance in
their many troubles that their career is intimately associated with hers.
With her very first years Mary Wollstonecraft began a bitter training in
the school of experience, which was to no small degree instrumental in
developing her character and forming her philosophy. There are few
details of her childhood, and no anecdotes indicating a precocious
genius. But enough is known of her early life to make us understand
what were the principal influences to which she was exposed. Her
strength sprang from the very uncongeniality of her home and her
successful struggles against the poverty and vice which surrounded her.
Her father was a selfish, hot-tempered despot, whose natural bad
qualities were aggravated by his dissipated habits. His chief
characteristic was his instability. He could persevere in nothing.
Apparently brought up to no special profession, he was by turns a
gentleman of leisure, a farmer, a man of business. It seems to have been
sufficient for him to settle in any one place to almost immediately wish
to depart from it. The history of the first fifteen or twenty years of his
married life is that of one long series of migrations. The discomforts
and petty miseries unavoidable to travellers with large families in
pre-railroad days necessarily increased his irascibility. The inevitable
consequence of these many changes was loss of money and still greater
loss of temper. That his financial experiments proved to be failures, is
certain from the abject poverty of his later years. That they were bad
for him morally, is shown in the fact that his children, when grown up,
found it impossible to live under the same roof with him. His
indifference in one particular to their wishes and welfare led in the end
to disregard of them in all matters.
It is more than probable that Mary, in her "Wrongs of Woman," drew
largely from her own experience for the characters therein represented,
and we shall not err in identifying the father she describes in this novel
with Mr. Wollstonecraft himself. "His orders," she writes, "were not to
be disputed; and the whole house was expected to fly at the word of
command.... He was to be instantaneously obeyed, especially by my

mother, whom he very benevolently married for love; but took care to
remind her of the obligation when she dared in the slightest instance to
question his absolute authority." He was, in a word, an egotist of the
worst description, who found no brutality too low once his anger was
aroused, and no amount of despotism too odious when the rights and
comforts of others interfered with his own desires. When contradicted
or thwarted his rage was ungovernable, and he used personal violence
not only to his dogs and children, but even to his wife. Drink and
unrestrained selfishness had utterly degraded him. Such was Mary's
father.
Mrs. Wollstonecraft was her husband's most abject slave, but was in
turn somewhat of a tyrant herself. She approved of stern discipline for
the young. She was too indolent to give much attention to the education
of her children, and devoted what little energy she possessed to
enforcing their